Journal Entries

Monday, July 02, 2007

Wow, if London has a ghetto, this must surely be it, I thought to myself as I disembarked from the underground car and started heading towards the hostel in New Cross where I would soon meet up with Kurt, Danette and Nancy. As I walked, averting eyecontact, I found plenty of reading material spray painted all around me and the air was filled with the constant wailing of nearby sirens. Given the circumstances, however, I did not feel in any way threatened, as if even the crime in London were proper. Soon, I rendezvoused with my fellow weary travelers and we made our way up to the room, which turned out to be a 12 bed dormroom. When we entered, I noted that about a third of the beds currently had occupants and that the room offered no isolation from the noise outside and the table in the room was covered by a vast array of powertools. Here aresome of the highlights of the next 24 hours:

Sometime in the afternoon, the four of us returned to the room to take a nap. I was rudely awoken about 2 hours later by a German girl in the bunk next to mine who thought it would be perfectly acceptable to take a phone call at full volume while 7 other people around her tried to sleep.

Grungy guy, obviously living at the hostel, who sat down on Nancy's bed in his underwear to put on some clothes.

Some jerk who came into the room at 1:00AM, turned on the light and then left the room for the next 30 minutes with the light on.

Beds that were so noisy, anytime someone breathed funny a symphony of squeaking immediately followed.

The most disgusting (and hence, shortest) shower of my life. In addition to the nasty environment, the water was regulated by one of those push valves that stayed on for all of 5 seconds washing my back was an exercise in futility as the water would shutoff right about the time I would turn around.